"Where is this place?"
After jotting down the address given by the caller, Lin Wuming turned to ask Yomikawa Aiho and Hachimitsu Toru, who were dozing off nearby.
The phone had rung almost nonstop through the night, so none of the three of them had gotten a proper rest—exactly the kind of trouble Yomikawa Aiho had warned him about beforehand.
"Huh? So, a real request finally came in?" Hachimitsu Toru perked up instantly. Brimming with interest, she moved behind Lin Wuming and grabbed the handles of his wheelchair. "I'll take you there."
"Kobayashi…" Yomikawa Aiho said weakly, half-asleep. "You're supposed to be recuperating right now."
Kobayashi smiled. "The hardest part is getting started. The moment the projects off the ground is exactly when I can't afford to drop the ball."
Even if this whole thing had started as nothing more than a cover for a lie, Kobayashi had no intention of half-assing it.
Nothing was scarier than taking something seriously. Even if the origin was a lie, he would turn it into truth through action and effort.
At least—until Shokuhou Misaki safely escaped from Talent Workshop and, as in the original storyline, enrolled at Tokiwadai Middle School. Only then would this plan truly be over.
Guided by Torahachi Toumi, Kobayashi arrived smoothly at the park where the client had arranged to meet.
Along the way, he also noticed that, not far behind them, there were figures who looked suspiciously like plainclothes Anti-Skill officers tailing them. Clearly, Anti-Skill hadn't fully let their guard down around him yet.
The first client was a female high school student, utterly ordinary in appearance, with nothing particularly remarkable about her.
"Is that her?" Toumi commented. "She doesn't look like a victim of illegal experiments."
"It's not like you run into illegal experiments that easily," Kobayashi said, unsurprised. "This is probably just a normal request."
He understood this better than anyone. Among those capable of calling him for help, the vast majority were unlikely to be victims of illegal experiments because such victims rarely had any means of contacting the outside world. And as Captain Haiya had said, if they did have the chance to make a call, most people would naturally contact Anti-Skill first.
When he decided to make his phone number public, Kobayashi had already prepared himself mentally to become something like a jack-of-all-trades.
In other words,s even if this girl had asked him to help find a lost cat, he wouldn't have been surprised.
"Um, excuse me," the girl said when she spotted him, walking over on her own initiative. "Are you Nana-kun?"
"That's me. You're the client this time, me Fili, right?" Kobayashi confirmed.
"Yes, that's me! Thank you so much for coming to help!"
The girl bowed deeply, then asked a little nervously, "Um… how much should I pay you as a reward?"
Clearly, this girl—who called herself Fili—had naturally categorized Kobayashi as some sort of all-purpose problem solver.
"No need," Kobayashi shook his head. "I don't require any compensation. This is volunteer work."
"Huh?" Fili looked at him in surprise.
"Tell me about your request first," Kobayashi said, cutting straight to the point.
"Yes!" Fili hurriedly nodded. "I want to ask for yohelp lp finding my friend. Starting last month, she suddenly disappeared…"
"Huh?"
This time, it was Kobayashi who was taken aback. He hadn't expected his very first request to be so serious and straightforward.
A missing person case, especially in an age of advanced communication technology,y was highly unusual. It was far too easy to associate it with illegal experiments.
Kobayashi immediately grew serious, fixing his gaze on the girl.
"Please explain the situation in detail. And if possible, provide as much personal information about the missing person as you can."
Fili had clearly come prepared. She immediately pulled an envelope from her shoulder bag.
"Everything's in here. Please take a look!"
She's serious about this.
Kobayashi thought so inwardly, though he couldn't help but complain to himself: If you have such complete资料, why didn't you just go to Anti-Skill in the first place?
"I'll investigate this properly. Please don't worry," he said after a brief exchange. "If you find any new leads, contact me right away."
Since this wasn't something that could be resolved immediately, Kobayashi decided to part ways for now and head home. He planned to consult Yomikawa and make use of Anti-Skill's resources to look into it.
"Thank you very much!" Fili bowed deeply once more.
After they separated from the client, Toumi finally spoke up.
"How boring. So it's just a missing person case."
"Even that counts as a very legitimate request," Kobayashi replied. "A disappearance, after all…"
"You think it might be illegal experiments?" Toumi guessed his line of thought. "But as far as I know, even illegal experiment facilities usually select their test subjects from the Selection groups or juvenile correction institutions. They don't target students with proper enrollment."
"That's true," Kobayashi nodded. "Still, it's worth investigating."
Just as they were heading back, a sedan suddenly pulled up from behind and matched their speed, driving alongside them.
"Nana-kun, Toumi-san,"
The voice came from the car—it was one of the Anti-Skill officers assigned to tail and monitor them.
"You don't need to worry about that request anymore."
"Why not?" Toumi asked.
"Because we've already located Fili's friend," the officer replied.
About a month ago, just as the holidays were starting, Fili's school happened to be one that let out early. Her friend had applied for permission to leave Academy City and gone home to reunite with her family.
"She's currently vacationing in Hawaii," the officer said. "She left her phone at home, so naturally, Fili couldn't contact her."
The truth was almost laughably so.
The officer cleared his throat and lowered his voice.
"That girl probably heard some unreliable rumor that Academy City can track people through their phones,nes so she deliberately left it behind."
Under Academy City regulations, students must report to their schools and apply for permission before leaving the city, regardless of destination. In principle, long-distance travel across cities without authorization wasn't allowed.
Fili's friend, worried that her Hawaii vacation might be blocked, hadn't submitted the application. Instead, she tried to evade Academy City's tracking by abandoning her phone…
And by sheer coincidence, that had created the illusion of a missing person.
"Is that girl an idiot?" Toumi scoffed mercilessly. "The tracking is done through subdermal chips, isn't it? What good does ditching your phone do?"
To manage students leaving Academy City, in addition to strict travel application procedures, the city required all departing students to be injected with implanted tracking chips.
This wasn't some hidden secret;cret it was clearly stated in black and white on the application documents.
Which was why Toumi didn't bother holding back in her criticism.
(End of Chapter)
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